


Melancholy Sings

by Transistance



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Asexual Character, F/M, Morning After, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7857154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things don't get better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Melancholy Sings

Snow is rare in the reaper realm, and in the first instant that he blinks awake William does not recognise it. The soft blue glow, tinted light seeping through the curtains, seems new and alien until he remembers the swathes of dead leaves across the garden, yesterday's cold. Dawn must just be blooming – six am, perhaps.

His bed is warm and quilted, and does not encourage abandonment to the cool air of morning. Grell's back is to him, her hair swept upward and away from her skin to allow sight of the faint pink blotches on the side of her neck, cast almost blue as the light is. Bruises, love marks – whoever's term may fit. For a moment he fancies that he can feel the imprints of her own hands across his back, his face, pressing and groping his body as they kissed, as she moaned, as they came close to being something beautiful.

William regrets her already.

Grell remains an enigma to him, her nebulous emotions swinging arcs wide enough that sometimes, just sometimes, she catches him in her orbit and her flirtations coalesce into nights like the last. He doesn't hate her enough to deny her sanctuary when she arrives alone, unexpected – it's almost routine. He'll sigh, deeply enough to allow her chance enough to reconsider, and then he'll let her in because although he does not hate her he rather often hates himself.

Chance enough to reconsider is exactly what she then gives him. Grell takes the time to hang up her coat, make small talk, sometimes makes tea – she encircles him at a pace that could be easily escaped, should he so desire to halt her advances. And the first touches are always small, testing things; her fingers light against his chest, brushing at his arm, and she has never initiated a kiss. On some level she is aware of his reticence, and accommodates it well.

William glances once at her sleeping body – her chest does not move but her skin is warm, a glowing pulse with no place so close to his own frigid aura – and slides himself carefully out of the bed, not wishing to accidentally awaken her. Things are simpler in sleep; dream skies cast away shadows that persist under sunlight, installing a sense of sensibility into an otherwise chaotic existence. But to awaken is unavoidable, eventually, and the air is exactly as cold as expected.

He pads out of the room to shower, and welcomes the sting of warm water on his ageless skin. For a moment he does let go, leaning his head against the wall and pretending in vain that this is death, not the start of another day, not the crying blue dawn of another winter because he has seen too many winters and doesn't know how long his perseverance can withstand the simple onslaught of time. He is dead. He is dead, he is dead he is dead he's dead gone _alone at peace dead_ – 

When he re-enters the bedroom to get dressed, Grell is stirring. Her eyelashes flutter as he buttons his shirt, and she murmurs something indistinct into the pillow before she raises a hand, rubs at her face and then meets his gaze with a long grin, half delight and half sordid satisfaction. She's aware of her immunity whilst in his house; the morning is a respite from his abuse, always, because he can't bring himself to blame her for his own failings. Her eyes follow his hands as they knot his tie, fix his cuffs, comb his hair flat. Grell smiles, smiles, and only stops smiling when William pulls open the curtains, letting the dim light wash the room sterile.

“It snowed,” he tells her. She nods, sitting up, holding the covers up against her chest. Lit up as she is now he can read her expression – doe-eyed, adoring, her usual drive sated for once. When she makes as though to rise he leaves the room.

Melancholy sings as he moves about the house; William fusses at his glasses, trying to get them to sit straight, and then makes coffee. Breakfast is easy to miss, although Grell will stick true to form and complain about the lack of food in his house. On a whim he touches one wall, registering faint surprise when his knuckles click against the surface. He's still real. Everything, vast and incomprehensible as it is, is still real.

His body is content, relaxed and unwound by the night's release. Do others feel like this on blue mornings after taking another person to bed? Not the physical ease, placid serenity. The mental detachment, floating void, nagging dirty self-resent. The ghost whimpers of her pleasure in his ears, the spectral lines traced across his skin by slow fingers, they remain – the retention of sensations foul on his mind now that he has space to consider them.

Perhaps it is because he does not love her. Grell is convenient; there are no strings to sleeping with her, no repercussions in the aftermath. She seems to enjoy it, and seems to understand that it is equally meaningless. He has never sought her out, but equally never tuned her away – because every time she appears, cast flushed in the curling tones of late evening, part of him hopes hard enough to believe that each time will be different. That this, finally, will be enjoyable, clean, something that he won't despair of in the morning.

It never is. The slight eagerness of her tongue is always unsettling, grossly off-putting, but _it'll get better, it has to_. Grell's skin is remarkably smooth, soft, but when she's naked beneath him all William can feel are the bruises that he's left across her purity over the years and an aghast mantra of _stop, stop, stop_. She writhes, moans as he moves, gives little hushed cries of encouragement in cracking voice – _yes, yes, more, Will, yes_ – and his body loves her, makes love to her, sweats and groans and tenses in unconscious bursts of warm lust. The sensations are wrong, spoiled when considered, but if he doesn't think about it – doesn't think about _her_ , doesn't think about himself, lets reality fly loose and retreat somewhere beyond his senses until its over – he can finish. And then he only has to listen to Grell's gasping breaths, coming fast and then more gently; ignore the scent of spent bodies and sweat until sleep claims one or both of them. Her back presses slick against his chest, usually, although sometimes she kisses him again before she succumbs to the natural lull of the night.

The coffee is lukewarm when Grell eventually wanders through, hair piled up beneath a towel and William's discarded shirt hanging haphazard across her. He doesn't understand her need to do that – they're almost the same size, so it barely covers her, especially as half of the buttons are undone – but she always does, and sticks to routine by sauntering over to where he's sitting and draping her arms over his shoulders.

She smells like his shower gel, masculine and harsh, but hasn't found grounds on which to complain yet. Her nose presses against his jaw, the edge of her glasses digging slightly against the back of his skull, and her lips touch his neck, once, briefly. He shakes her off.

“It's snow _ing_ , now, lover,” Grell says softly, taking a step backward as William drains his cup and stands. “A weather front blown in from the east, maybe.”

William doesn't answer. She's always rather more demure in his house than the office – perhaps because it's his territory entirely, or because she doesn't understand why he lets her stay if only to snub her so viciously once they leave. But when she steps forward, too short without her heels and too plain without her makeup, he doesn't back away – and when she tips her head up to look at him, bright eyes a flat reflection of his own, he kisses her. It's only a formality, but she sighs against his mouth and puts her hands to his face and they just kiss, on and off and shallow enough that they could be strangers until she pulls back to breathe a _thank you_.

He never knows how to reply, never knows what she wants to hear, so he just nods, once, stiffly. They part ways on his doorstep – she knows where the keys are, and can be trusted to lock up – and William wonders, bitterly, when he'll learn that things don't get better.


End file.
